Chuck Todd: The Colorado recall means Dems will tell Bloomberg’s anti-gun group to take a hike

Erika JohnsenPosted at 1:21 pm on September 12, 2013

Plenty of Democrats apparently still feel inclined to believe that this week’s successful Colorado recall election was the result of a teeny, tiny but vociferously vocal minority that only managed to pull out a victory because of 1) the egregious gobs of cash funneled their way by the NRA, the Koch Brothers, and other such seedy groups, and 2) the “tactical reasons why Democrats didn’t have a chance here,” i.e. the far-fetched and baseless claims of “voter suppression” à laDebbie Wasserman Schultz. The truth of the matter, of course, tells rather a different story: In fact, a Public Policy Poll that they, ahem, declined to release showed a large margin of support for the pro-recall side; and what’s more, liberal groups outspent the pro-Second Amendment crowd by a 7-to-1 margin. The MSNBC crowd, too, seems happy to gloss over these key pieces of information, but Chuck Todd does point out that this was not, as DWS called determinedly titled it, a “hollow victory.” In a lot of areas, gun control is simply not a winning issue for Democrats, and one of the biggest takeaways here is that Democrats are likely to actively eschew any offering of “help” from the contaminating effects of the well-monied and rabidly anti-gun Bloomberg group — and if he persists in providing it, it’s the Democrats who’ll suffer.

Look, Democrats — when you look at Colorado, the whole reason why it’s a state that looked like it’s just passing through swing-state status on it’s way to being reliably Democratic is because Democrats, starting in 2004, just neutralized the gun issue. And there was never any Democrat that ran state-wide that was not seen as pro-gun, didn’t allow that issue to get there, and they were able to sort of marginalize the Republican party on immigration, on social issues, etcetera, and win. And now I think you’re going to see, Steve’s right, there were unique circumstances in these races, and the rules in mail-in ballots, you can go through a lot of tactical reasons why Democrats didn’t have a good chance here. But I can tell you this, you know the way Democrats — James will know this, every Democrat south of the Mason-Dixon line and west of the Mississippi is going to look at those results and say, ‘Michael Bloomberg, get away from me, stay out of my state, stay out of my district, I don’t want to talk about it.